These are all poems of little compass, and with the exception
of Bronx and a portion of the Fragment, they have no character
distinctive from the mass of our current poetical literature. Bronx,
however, is in our opinion, not only the best of the writings of
Drake, but altogether a lofty and beautiful poem, upon which his
admirers would do better to found a hope of the writer's ultimate
reputation than upon the niaiseries of the Culprit Fay. In the
Fragment is to be found the finest individual passage in the volume
before us, and we quote it as a proper finale to our review.
Yes! thou art lovelier now than ever,
How sweet't would be when all the air
In moonlight swims, along thy river
To couch upon the grass, and hear
Niagra's everlasting voice
Far in the deep blue west away,
That dreamy and poetic noise
We mark not in the glare of day,
Oh! how unlike its torrent-cry,
When o'er the brink the tide is driven,
As if the vast and sheeted sky
In thunder fell from Heaven.
Halleck's poetical powers appear to us essentially inferior, upon
the whole, to those of his friend Drake. He has written nothing at all
comparable to Bronx. By the hackneyed phrase, sportive elegance, we
might possibly designate at once the general character of his writings
and the very loftiest praise to which he is justly entitled.
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